Gas sensor network for air-pollution monitoring

This paper describes the development of a gas sensor system to be used as a sensing node to form a dense real-time environmental monitoring network. Moreover, a new auto-calibration method is proposed to achieve the maintenance-free operation of the sensor network. The network connectivity can be used not only for data collection but also for the calibration and diagnosis of the sensors since the measured pollutant concentrations can be easily compared through the network with nearby sensors and governmental monitoring stations. Different pollutant concentrations are usually monitored at different sites. However, a case study on local NO2 distribution has shown that there exists a special condition under which pollutant concentrations become low and uniform in a certain local area. The baseline of the gas sensor response can be adjusted in this special occasion using the pollutant concentration values reported from the neighboring environmental monitoring stations. The experimental result has shown that NO2 concentration can be measured with sufficient accuracy by incorporating appropriate temperature and humidity compensation into calibration curves. Moreover, a case study on auto-calibration demonstrates its effectiveness in keeping the measurement accuracy of the sensor system in long-term operation. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.